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big July update is LIVE!! go play

THE FUTURE IS NOW!
The new and improved BIG JULY UPDATE is now live on Steam, for your AG racing pleasure! As you may have seen over the weekend we had a couple of internal issues to resolve, unfortunately that meant delaying the launch slightly.
However, I’m sure you will appreciate the results of our hard work and hopefully it serves to clearly set out our intentions to deliver something really special (wipes sweat from brow). Hopefully the wait will have been worth it.
If you have approached us for keys please check your email tomorrow – we value constructive feedback so feel free to flood the forums with your critical appraisal and get the word out for others to do likewise.
If you intend to just flame the forums with vitriol, we tend not to be as responsive, but we do value your input and do take note (be warned).
The update we have given you, we feel, now justifies the £14.99 price tag, which is half the final RRP of £29.99.
Whilst still in Alpha it is roughly half the game in terms of content and game treatment. We will now retreat to the trenches and push on to completion generating new content and refining gameplay as we go.

DISCLAIMER: Because this is a big update, we want to stress test the game over the next week, so if you encounter a crash (multiplayer is a bit delicate) can you please provide details of the crash to team@r8games.com . Please put the words "CRASH REPORT" in the Subject line.

THAT’S NOT ALL FOLKS!
No no no…
To keep you satisfied we will continue to deliver monthly patches on Steam to fine tune the game experience, along with a few exciting new features. However - new content will be limited to TPP members who will have exclusive access going forward.

HOW DOES THE TPP THING WORK – IS IT EVEN A ‘THING’?
Yes. Admittedly we have been very quiet, but it was always going to be a big part of how we develop the game; we just needed to put the brakes on and create the right conditions. But now we want to take a step back and focus our efforts on you special people. Our QA Manager, Robert D will lead you by the hand through this important phase.
We will:
- Deliver the remaining RedRoutes to you, starting with the new track Terminus – an exciting track design with lots of new features. The plan is to deliver this mid-August.
- Set weekly QA tasks to gather feedback. This will be managed by our QA Manager!
- Interact personally with community QA leaders to discuss development particulars (this will be under NDA of course as you will effectively be part of the team).

I MISSED THE BOAT, CAN I BECOME A TEST PILOT?
YES! There will be two more recruitment phases to co-inside with major updates. Wait for announcements to go out through twitter and social media and then join up!
- The first phase will start next Monday and will last for 7 days. This is to bolster numbers so we can test multiplayer.
- The second phase will start 2 months before launch. This is to focus test game balancing.

LETS GET BACK TO THE UPDATE! WHAT’S THE DEALIO?
As mentioned previously – this update is important for a number of reasons. For a start it shows that we have not been idle twiddling our thumbs – it represents a lot of late nights, a lot of testing and a lot of trawling through forums for feedback (don’t worry, we have thick skins). We are proud of how it is coming together now and for the first time, to us, the jigsaw pieces are slotting together.
You will see (wip):
- Craft: F4000, F3000, F2000 – complete with team skins;
- Tracks: Niagara GP, Mannahatta, Trans Atol, Atlas Torres;
- Menu: tDR elements being interwoven without our previous placeholder work;
- Garage: The first pass version of the garage complete with basic upgrade nodes;
- Game Loop: Play tracks, win credits and try all the different the classes;
- Multiplayer: Host races and play with up to 10 friends;
- Weapons: Mines; Gauss Cannon; Rockets; Shockwave (basic implementation);
- AI Balancing: First pass AI behaviour trained and developed to fit each track;
- Game Lore: All team lore in place;
- Practice mode: Practice a race;
- Tutorial: Learn the basics;
- General: Loading screens, craft profiles, team profiles, speed boost and screen FX, optimisation;
- Craft behaviour: refinements to handling and collision friction;
Plus many many more..
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!! GO PLAY THE GAME!

A couple of us tried FF at WipeoutCon and we all kind of had the same feelings about it, the handling felt rather sluggish and weird. To me personally it felt as if just steering with the stick/d-pad was air brake behaviour, and the air brakes themselves, just extra of the same, steering also slowed you down incredibly, something that seems odd as that should be air brake behaviour and not really craft steering.
In my opinion, steering should just be a constant rotation of the directionvector, where the rotation speed is exponentially lerped to its constant max value (This lerp should happen fast, as otherwise it appears as input lag where the ship starts turning much later than you actually started steering (how it appears to be now)), but stops incrementing once the maximum rotation speed for this ship's handling is reached, i'm okay if it slows you down just a touch, but not the way it is right now, just my input ;-) (Haven't tried the new patch yet, but just fyi)

ps you are a good/enthusiastic community manager, you may not see many replies here, but you can rest assured your posts are being read

As per your last line, our bottom line is: please try out the new build on Steam EA and let me know what you think after that. Still some tweaking to be done but we feel it's moved on several light years.

BTW you'll be seeing much much more activity on the http://formulafusion.co.uk/index.php?/forums/ as we now have someone full time in the studio who will be on top of the TPP forum. We hang our heads in shame as we know we've been very neglectful of our most important community. Community management can take up a huge amount of time and we were basically focusing on the game.

As per Andrew's announcement above, after opening the TPP again for a limited period, the game will effectively continue as a closed beta with the TPP community, of which you are a prominent member.

Originally Posted by Cipher

A couple of us tried FF at WipeoutCon and we all kind of had the same feelings about it, the handling felt rather sluggish and weird. To me personally it felt as if just steering with the stick/d-pad was air brake behaviour, and the air brakes themselves, just extra of the same, steering also slowed you down incredibly, something that seems odd as that should be air brake behaviour and not really craft steering.
In my opinion, steering should just be a constant rotation of the directionvector, where the rotation speed is exponentially lerped to its constant max value (This lerp should happen fast, as otherwise it appears as input lag where the ship starts turning much later than you actually started steering (how it appears to be now)), but stops incrementing once the maximum rotation speed for this ship's handling is reached, i'm okay if it slows you down just a touch, but not the way it is right now, just my input ;-) (Haven't tried the new patch yet, but just fyi)

ps you are a good/enthusiastic community manager, you may not see many replies here, but you can rest assured your posts are being read

Just read the heads up and downloaded it, unfortunately it's a bit late for me to actually try it out, so I'll give it a shot after work tomorrow.

I see that you haven't actually posted any specifics on how new people will able to join up on the TPP, I checked R8's site, R8's Facebook.

I got thinking that the vast majority of former Wipeout players that would be interested in doing so would be based in UK/ Euro, which traditionally is where Wipeout has had it core following [only due to Sony's lack of advertising of Wipeout elsewhere ]

So I took the liberty of posting at the Official UK/Euro Playstation forums about this up coming additional TPP, in the hope that you get the required numbers, giving links to R8's website and R8's Facebook page, as you mention you intend to use social media to get the word out.Suggest a separate new thread at this forum, as some who missed out on the original TPP I'm sure would love a second crack at it.

Since FF is going to be ported to the PS4, I figured that the temptation for those interested to be ahead of the game by participating in the TPP would be pretty strong .... guess we shall see what happens.[link to post below - Hope I got it all correct ]http://community.eu.playstation.com/...d/m-p/24428371

Not an omission, we will be posting TPP entry instructions shortly. We'll make sure that everyone who wants in gets in. No pilot left behind ;-)
We want to leave the public Steam EA version in a really good state so we're not closing it off to all but TPPs yet. A number of bugs need to be fixed.

Thanks for posting to the PS site.

PM me for my thoughts on Sony and their franchise
;-)

Originally Posted by blackwiggle

Just read the heads up and downloaded it, unfortunately it's a bit late for me to actually try it out, so I'll give it a shot after work tomorrow.

I see that you haven't actually posted any specifics on how new people will able to join up on the TPP, I checked R8's site, R8's Facebook.

I got thinking that the vast majority of former Wipeout players that would be interested in doing so would be based in UK/ Euro, which traditionally is where Wipeout has had it core following [only due to Sony's lack of advertising of Wipeout elsewhere ]

So I took the liberty of posting at the Official UK/Euro Playstation forums about this up coming additional TPP, in the hope that you get the required numbers, giving links to R8's website and R8's Facebook page, as you mention you intend to use social media to get the word out.Suggest a separate new thread at this forum, as some who missed out on the original TPP I'm sure would love a second crack at it.

Since FF is going to be ported to the PS4, I figured that the temptation for those interested to be ahead of the game by participating in the TPP would be pretty strong .... guess we shall see what happens.[link to post below - Hope I got it all correct ]http://community.eu.playstation.com/...d/m-p/24428371

I just had a quick go at this build and your game starts to look very promising imo. Speed sensations are awesome and general feeling of the ship is already good, especially in internal view.
This update fixed the lack of responsivness in controls of the last build and the game is more enjoyable to play.
Gameplay is not perfect yet but it's nice to see improvments, keep going

For those Wipeout tragic's who are reading this and can't currently play this test build, and are wondering, well just how close to Wipeout has this game gotten ?
I can say that for all intended purposes I think R8 might just have pulled this off, and FF WILL be the Wipeout replacement we have all been waiting for .....still needs quite a bit of work, but the progress seen with this build over the last is staggering .
If you have a PC, you really should get on the new TPP that will start 1st August and see for yourselves just how close to Wipeout FF is, even at this rough stage development wise.

What a truly MASSIVE difference between what we have been testing previously and this build, and in every conceivable department.

The handling is a order of magnitude better than before, and a LOT faster.....wait till you race in Python class guys , think faster than Super Phantom speed
The fleshed out tracks look great, [I even ENJOYED racing around Manahatta -seems you tamed the Fog effects a bit, Night time around here will be the test ]

I love the new TRANS ATOL track, well at the current racing speed at least.

OK, some questions and some findings so far.

Q: I see at the bottom right it has 'Vote to Start'...How will this work?
Is it intended as a vote for which track is chosen when online in a room ? or meant as a vote to prod the host into stop waiting to fill a room and start the race? ... personally I'm hoping it's the latter, and track selection is left to the rooms host.

Q: What in this build is actually supposed to be operating? and what is still just a working menu interface ?

Tutorial, for what very basic form it is ATM works.

Practice I imagine this is where players can test craft and weapon upgrades, strangely there is no option to select speed class to practice in, which I think is a bit remiss, also on Trans Atol at least, if respawned, you are not respawned with your chosen racing view, it defaults to above view and you have to change it ...not a big problem, a player view lock in options would be nice.

Custom Event works, but seems very similar to Practice mode, except in this mode speed class is able to be chosen, so I'm not really sure what the differentiation between the two is supposed to be ?

Quick Race works for those tracks that are unlocked

Online EDIT: Tried once 1.5h after my original post, only two pilots, I was guest, used settings as posted below ....was supposed to be 3 Laps, my handling throughout the whole race was diabolical, basically very little control, control I did have was extremely laggy, was using a Xbox controller, game was supposed to finish but continued after crossing checked start/finish , continued for a corner or two then game froze, was returned to opening page [press any button], had to use Alt/ctrl/del to go to task manager to close FF/steam....no error report.

Garage No craft changes are able to be made ATM [The choices ATM are, for those that are interested, come under 6 categories that are made available by rotating your craft with the Left Stick -Offensive, Defensive, Handling, Speed, Braking, Shield ] this is going to be really interesting how these options are used by people [ Loadable presets please ]

Team Select For those that are interested on how this works - There are 10 teams -each team represents a world region, within each of these regions are the country flags that make up this regional team.... only the regions have a different craft skin..... so you go through the regions first looking for your countries flag, select that region, then select which flag within that region you wish to fly under...... Currently there are 3 regions that have yet to have skins designed for them, those Regions are the West Euro, Central Euro and the Americas ....I suppose individual country flags will be a option to be shown when online for tournament organization, but otherwise not shown ?

I forgot if we on the TPP are allowed to post screen shots at various forums, or post YouTube videos [other than R8's own one], could that be clarified ?

Just one other thing, I see the performance hit to my GTX970 VC has now got the game running at 50 FPS with 1920 x 1080 / Epic / Fullscreen ... well less than half the frame rate that I was getting on Mannahatta with the same settings in the last build...can't wait till you optimize the code

Hey BW you can actually improve the stats of the ships with the credits you earn.
You need to use your mouse (gamepad doesn't seem to work there). Click on a ship propertie you want to upgrade then there is a grey slider barely visible right in the middle of the stats screen.

It's not true customisation atm, i hope it's just a way to allow players to get ultimate ships without counterparts for now.
A system where you must choose your upgrades depending on the track, on the mode you're racing would be more interessing.
Be carefull to choose the right ship you want to upgrade, i spent all my welcome credits on the wrong one here

OK, thanks ericd7 I'll try the mouse.
I haven't been able to get the craft to change as yet, probably for the same reason, need to use the mouse.

You can build up credits for upgrades easy enough by just getting a high enough finish in Quick Race mode.
As I have not as yet seen what these various specific upgrades are in each particular section, I don't know which would be the best way to approach upgrading.
I guess that's what Practice mode is for..... I'm guessing you can't try each upgrade in Practice mode first on your craft before purchasing, that would be a better option.... maybe instead of purchasing the upgrades first, you could have a Tes-tbed mode within the Garage to do just this, not sure if R8 would implement it.
I've requested a saved craft update preset mode for favorite craft a few builds back, so you could load them for different tracks and conditions, Purdisc seemed to think it was a good idea and I think it will get implemented.

I'm just about to purchase and download Movavi video suite so I can record and edit some video's of what a huge upgrade this build is, so everybody can hopefully get really excited...AGAIN!
Might take a while till I get familiar with the software.

I'll do one of a run through of the basic menu options available, track selection [only 4 available of 8 ATM] all with Reverse and Night options, the craft updating, and team select process.
Then another video showing a lap around the new Trans Atol track, and another edited video showing the differences in the speed classes on the same track as reference.

Do you have access to night and reverse tracks as a TPP member? It would be great to watch some videos of these
I really like the layout and environment of Trans Atol too, unfortunetly the framerate make this new track unplayable on my computer.

I bought the game only 2 weeks ago so i can't only compare the 2 last builds.
Regards to the handling changes, i feel R8 has done good about responsivness; we can now recover from mistakes more easily and have more liberties with lines; everything doesn't have to be perfect like before which is very important for online races.
But also i feel you've gone a bit too far in that the ship doesn't loose enough speed when steering and the wall collisions are way too much permissive. So it feels less 'floaty and realistic' than before imo with F4000 and F3000 ships.
F2000 physic feels different of the other 2 but seems to need upgrades first. It's also very hard to handle pitching with this ship.
Stick controls are still a bit too much sensitive in general, you get used to it after some time but an additional setting option would be great.

But the game is already fun and i'm looking forward to play online (didn't work yesterday) hopefully with some WZ pilots too